Strong
by decyfer
Summary: The real reason Stella left New York traces back to 9/11, and as she goes about her new role of leadership in New Orleans, she must also remember what brought her there.
1. Chapter 1

Strong

The real reason Stella left New York traces back to 9/11, and as she goes about her new role of leadership in New Orleans, she must also remember what brought her there.

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_**IMPORTANT: I don't mean to offend anyone by the content of this chapter. I cannot express to you the horror of watching the Twin Towers—the World Trade Center—fall, and neither do I want to. While no one I knew was in the buildings when it collapsed, it made a lasting impression on me that made this chapter—and the next one—hard to write. I have no intentions to desecrate any part of 9/11, and if there are any mistakes that one would like me to fix, please tell me so I can make the corrections. Thank you and I hope you will enjoy your read.**_

-decyfer

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"_Time is passing. Yet, for the United States of America, there will be no forgetting September the 11th. We will remember every rescuer who died in honor. We will remember every family that lives in grief. We will remember the fire and ash, the last phone calls, the funerals of the children_."

-President George W. Bush, November 11, 2001

New York was screaming.

It was a collective scream heard around the world, of terror and disbelief, of dashed dreams and impossible hopes.

New York was burning.

The smoke wafted in the air, painting lazy curling trails around the rubble. As it burned, the screams reached the other cities, reached the nation separating and connecting each and every one of its people.

New York was dead.

Or, at least, it would never be the same, even after the screams died down and the fires were put out.

But New York and the rest of the nation would not give up.

It would shape a generation and inspire a sleeping nation to stand up and fight for itself. It would make decisions, sometimes controversial, in order to inspire hope. But what it wouldn't do was give up.

Because giving up is only a way to say that the lives that were lost in protection to this country weren't worth enough to fight for.

And the United States of America has never said that before.

From outside the rubble of the South Tower, a man watches in horror. His face is cut and bleeding, hands torn open from sifting through it all. He was once wearing a nice suit, but now it's covered in ash, blood, sweat, and tears, ruined forever in the aftermath. He doesn't blink as he looks at his hands, looks at the blood trailing through the dust, looks through them all the same. Grief washes down his face like a tidal flood, for all that has been lost and will never be found.

He throws himself back into work. He's a first responder, a detective at a crime scene only minutes away. There's a mask on his lower face, concealing the words he's shouting. The screams drown out the sound. It isn't safe to go into the rubble, he knows, but he's on the outskirts, where the people—the citizens—those he was sworn to protect—had jumped, had preferred the air around them to the lick of flames. He steps around brain matter, takes a pulse for one or two, but they're lost, and he knows it well.

The bodies are at angles impossible, and stone litters the street. The North Tower burns on for eternity before it groans and gives out under its own weight. He watches it fall, gaze full of his own weight that he would surely hold for the rest of his life. So many dead. So many maimed. Who would go home to see their loved ones again? Who wouldn't be recovered from the smoldering heap the towers had become?

He realizes that he's breathing, that he's bleeding, that he's alive. He almost laughs out loud, not in relief, but in irony, as everything has been taken from him.

No one on her floor would have gotten out alive. He swallows convulsively as he sees a delicate hand resting neatly on a box, and he almost hopes it's her, for while blood stains the white skin, it will at least bring finality, and at least he will get to put her to rest.

It isn't her, but he isn't surprised, not anymore. Will he ever be again? He can hardly see through the dust and the ash, his eyes are stinging, burning. He's burning.

He hears screaming voices come in tune with each other over the roaring in his ears. It takes time, but he realizes that it's him screaming, that the burning in his throat isn't only from the ash, but also from the terror. The other screams come from a city that has just been attacked, that has just been violated—what had happened?

He realizes that he doesn't know where anyone is, apart from himself, and feels alone, despite the bodies that lay around him. He bends down again and tries to pull a wall off of a woman, but it's too late for her: it was already too late this morning, when she went into work.

He can't possibly know that her name is Eliza and that she's from San Francisco. He won't know that until they pull the crushing weight off of her and until her husband screams her name in shock. She wasn't supposed to be there, she had been visiting her sister on the third floor—a surprise for her birthday—how had this happened?

And he wouldn't have any answers for the man, just like he didn't have any answers for himself now. He tries to take stock of the wasteland around him, for just a moment, but he's close to exhaustion and the world is filled with smoke. He looks up at the fragile remains of the Towers and wonders what the United States had done—what he had done—to deserve this pain. Flames dotted the streets as pieces of drywall rained from the North Tower, the Tower that didn't assault his heart with terrorized madness.

He's being selfish, he knows, but he somehow can't come up with the same amount of horror for those deaths. She hadn't known them. He might have never even seen their faces. He will, soon, though—with their eyes open and staring, rips in their flesh, shreds of skin hanging off their bodies and crushed bone inside them giving way for the medical examiner's knife. He wonders briefly how many teams will be called in to clear the rubble, to identify the bodies that could be salvaged.

He pauses briefly over a man that looks like he's been torn in half. His eyes are open, but in their unseeing depths he finds something that scares him more than all of the other bodies put together: he sees welcoming, like he was looking forward to his death. A small smile is frozen on his lips, and he recoils away in horror. His mouth opens wide, but no noise comes out as he tries to suck in a desperate breath.

He had been so alone minutes ago. Now, not only did he have this strangely complacent body that he feels staring at him even as he walks away, but also a frantic voice in his head, wondering three-fourths the w's—who and why and even what. Who did this? Why did they do it? What exactly had happened? That was the detective in him, he supposes, as he suppresses the chant.

The screaming is less frequent and his ears, albeit ringing, can hear straight again. The smoke is rising away, being blown another direction, not just sitting and cloaking the surroundings. He can see further, and therefore can think more clearly on his task—survivors.

He imagines a mass exodus is taking place, and as he looks back as far as he can see, he notices other mask-clad individuals that looked to be police officers shepherding people out of the surrounding businesses and homes.

Which is what he should have been doing, if he had had half a brain. He switches on his police radio and listens to it roar orders that he can't quite make out. He has to be calm. But damn it all, what was there to be calm about? Who knew how many people were dead—who knew how many people were still alive out there?

People that were injured could be burning alive, and he was stopping to check the already dead! He hurtles along the street, stopping and taking a pulse or two from the ones he thinks are moving, but it's just a trick—a senseless piece of misinformation his mind is forming, like seeing an oasis in a desert.

Around him is the debris of two monumental structures that had been a part of the world's economy. Around him lays the dead and the dying, those who got up this morning ready for just another boring day at work. Around him lays hopelessness and despair and the crying of children, those who would never see their parents again and those that would.

He made a promise to himself in that instant in which he felt like dropping to his knees and shouting blasphemies to the sky, in the moment where he wished that some force would strike him dead—God, are you there? Can you hear New York screaming? Please, if you're out there, please help us—but nothing comes more than a cool breeze in the scorching debris, telling him nothing.

He looks back again and realizes that he hasn't gone far at all. The path he had taken was filled with huge chunks of metal, yards of twisting wire, and burning materials. The heat is unbearable, but he just now notices it. His shoes are half-melted, his hands scorched and skin burned, and he doesn't care—he can't care anymore.

As police escort a family out, a little girl trips over a piece of debris, only it's not a piece of rubble—it's a leg, and he can hear her shrill scream. A figure climbs towards him, carefully but urgently over the dead and the bent and broken pieces of the World Trade Center.

The figure is also suit-clad and a formerly blue tie lies ripped and askew against his chest. Ash obscures his coloration and turns his hair gray, but he recognizes the voice at it calls out to him, recognizes the man underneath the ash, but he can't seem to find the calm man that he had once been.

His face is full of fear. It was an emotion that he had never seen on this man's face before, and it seemed out of place. "Mac," he says.

"Lance," Mac answers, unsurprised at the half-hearted greeting.

No other words are needed. The two stop and stare at the remains of the Twin Towers for a minute, in companionable but heart-wrenching silence, before Lance speaks again. "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," the defeated voice next to the Latino offers as an attempt to get out of the conversation he was starting.

The Dayshift Supervisor coughs slightly into his mask and looks over at him through the corner of one squinted eye. While Lance Wheatley is young, able-bodied, and his boss, Mac can usually talk circles around him, and the CSI's rookie orbits, and he can't find it within him to tell Mac that their team is fractured more than it already was.

"I sent Greener to help with the North Tower," Lance says, stuttering over the words 'north' and 'tower' because he can't believe that they're gone yet, either.

Mac is in a puddle of blood, crouched over a partially decapitated woman that he doesn't have to take the pulse of to know she's dead. The destruction and the sparking of electrical wires surrounds them, and Mac takes the opportunity to wipe his bloody hands on his equally bloody shirt. He's torn, cut, and diced in more places than he can count, but he can't really feel the pain, and so he trudges on, looking down into the rubble to make sure he doesn't see anyone that's trapped alive. "Allison? You didn't send her alone, did you?"

Lance grits his teeth at the questioning of his power. He knows that Mac is out of it, that he doesn't mean it, but he should be talking more than he is and that freaks him out enough not to ask exactly what Mac was up to. "No," he answers. "She'll be meeting up with Moran and his rookie, Flack."

Mac's a leader, not a follower. He can follow, but right now he's leading, and Lance can't begrudge him that, when they're dead—he hesitates even to use the word around Mac—and Lance Wheatley hasn't lost anyone important to him, so he feels like he's not doing too much damage to himself by letting Mac do the talking right now. He needed a friend, after all, not someone to order him about. Not right now.

"Listen, Mac, I think you should get out of here," he cringes, waiting for an angry rebuttal that doesn't come. When Lance opens his eyes, Mac has already moved on to another outcropping of concrete, peering into the cavern it had made. "Mac?"

"I heard you," Mac replies, placing a hand on his ash covered face, leaving blood on his jaw. He looked at Lance with eyes that expressed all that he had lost. "I have to find her. I have to find Claire. I won't leave her here, Wheatley. I won't." He turned back to his work, looking up at the burned-out wall that was all that remained of the once great building. "I thought… well, I thought Stella would be here to help me look. Knowing her, she'd be out here already—but I haven't seen her. Have you?"

Lance started. He hadn't thought that Mac didn't know. Hadn't he realized? "I haven't seen her this morning, Mac," he said quietly. "It's a Tuesday."

Mac froze in place. Then, slowly, painfully, he tore his gaze away from the debris to Lance's face. His eyes, which had been full of the pain of Claire's loss and the hatred he felt towards whoever had done this turned into a look of pure horror.

The reason was simple: every Tuesday, Stella and Claire had breakfast together in the Towers.

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**Question of the Week: What pairings would you like to see? Your answers will have an impact on this story's direction and outcome. Keep in mind, of course, that Danny and Lindsay are not to be messed with.**

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**A/N: This story will deal with the sensitive topic of cancer. As I myself have dealt with the effects cancer can have on lives, I can safely say that this story is not for everyone. If you do choose to continue with the story, you have my thanks and appreciation, but know that you can back out at any time. Please know that I have limited knowledge of this particular type of cancer dealt with within this story and would appreciate any feedback that would make this story a better read. One other thing to know: this story takes place just after season six. All characters season six and beyond will be included.**

**Additionally, this story will be run mainly on your input. This means that I will need you, as my wonderful readers, to influence this story for the better. I'm leaving pairings, OCs, and ranks to you, if you'd like to have them. Thanks!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

**A/N: I would like to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for this overwhelming response to Strong's first chapter, and while I would like to go wild with excitement, this is not the time or the place, as I would like to be as respectful as possible while dealing with this type of tragedy. The chapter below you deals with the aftermath of 9/11, and while Mac's story outside of the Towers could have been plausible, Stella's story from within remains strictly fictional. Only twenty people were rescued from the rubble of the Towers, and I cannot stress enough the importance of remembering the people who died in the World Trade Center's collapse. And so while I am placing Stella within the rubble, I am certainly not counting her among the twenty people who actually survived. Again, I mean no offense to anyone regarding my portrayal of September 11****th****, 2001. If any mistakes were made, please tell me so that I can correct them. I would like to be as factually accurate as possible.**

**A/N 2: I would like to apologize at how late this chapter is. While I have excuses, I will not make any—I should have made time to finish this chapter before last weekend started, knowing how busy I would become. And so I present chapter two to you with no further ado!**

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_"Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. The victims were in airplanes, or in their offices; secretaries, businessmen and women, military and federal workers; moms and dads, friends and neighbors. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror . . . This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day. Yet, we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world." _

-President George W. Bush, September 11, 2001

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

**08:41:01 AM**

It's a nice day, considering that Hurricane Erin is whipping up a storm out on the ocean. It won't hit New York, and so she enjoys the crisp autumn air while she can, before the changing leaves fall and winter sets in.

It's a little early to be thinking about winter, but in New York it was harsh, and the murders are no less frequent. She readjusts her grip on the carryout bag's handles and opens her mouth in a small, soundless yawn. The day seems so lazy, set out before her. Granted, before long she would probably be called to a crime scene, and then the real work would begin. No time for being lazy in the city that never sleeps!

She was running late, again—it had to be at least half the hour by now: she was supposed to be on Claire's floor twenty minutes ago, and so she hurries along the street to the South Tower. The windows are gleaming today, and she's willing to bet they've just been washed. She enters the building in a rush, jostling the bag of food. If they were going to have any time to eat this morning, she had to hurry!

It's bustling inside the World Trade Center. Workers flit here and there, and she groans as she realizes the elevator is packed. Deciding to wait for the next one, she leans lightly against the wall, tapping the paper bag with her fingertips. Her badge is hooked to her belt, and her gun beside. She gets a few gazes, but they pass over quickly.

Every Tuesday, she and Claire have breakfast together on the observation deck, if weather allows. If not, her desk or even two chairs pushed together in a corner suffice well. Claire has to get up much earlier than she, and together they break the monotonous routine of the week to have a meal between friends. They were close, closer than what they would usually be (a CSI's wife and said CSI's coworker) but they had never been exactly normal people, and they enjoy their time together, so why not?

Her phone buzzes, and she picks it up with a smile. "Claire!" she greets, and receives her own name back.

"Stella! What have you brought to eat today? I can't smell it from here."

"I'm downstairs, waiting for the elevator," Stella says, picking up on the subtle 'where are you' and looking at the elevator to gather what floor it was on. "And I'm not telling you. You got to pick last week, and today it's my surprise."

"You knew what it was!"

Stella's laugh rang through the lobby, causing eyes to flicker to her. She quiets, a grin stuck on her face. "It's good, I promise."

"Are you sure?" Claire's half-dubious, half-amused voice hangs in the air. "Last time you promised something good, you discovered an acid."

"How was I supposed to know it would eat through Tupperware?"

Claire laughs melodically. "Never get your recipes off of suspicious internet sites?"

"But however else were we supposed to get Mac out of those ridiculous shoes?"

Claire had taken Stella's vile 'breakfast' concoction home, and when Mac asked Claire how it had gotten all over his favorite shoes, she had declined to answer, citing 'intestinal trauma'.

And how Claire and Stella had laughed, into the night and for the following week, until Mac gave up his fight and threw the clown-like shoes away.

"You have a point there. Pancakes?"

"Why is that always your first guess?"

"Because they're delicious. Aren't you a fan of delicious flavor?"

"You sound like a man I met once—gave the NYPD a tip on one of our homicides and a pineapple to boot."

"Was he cute? Stella, tell me you got his number."

"Claire—"

"Stella?" Claire interrupts her, tone changing from teasing to serious in a microsecond. "Stella, there's a plane outside the window."

"There are always planes outside the windows. It's New York," Stella says, more to herself than Claire as she moves toward the window herself. If she's learned anything as Claire Taylor's friend, she's learned to trust her.

"No, it's way too close! Stella, I think it's going to—"

**08:46:31AM**

The ground rocks, the windows shake, and suddenly Stella's on the ground, ducking to the tile with well-trained ease. It had happened so quickly that she had had no time to find cover or even attempt to help someone.

She doesn't scream, and Claire doesn't either, and now all they can hear in the phone is each other's loud, nervous breathing and an equally loud explosion-like noise only slightly muffled by the arching windows of the South Tower.

"It's hit the North Tower," Claire says in a tone of finality that's completely and utterly too calm for the situation.

Shock permeates their conversation until Stella finally spoke: "Son of a— Claire, I need to call you back."

"I know," came the quiet answer of a wife resigned to a policeman's work, or in this case, a policewoman's. "Be careful."

"Remember what Mac and I taught you?"

A nervous chuckle. "I was hoping I'd never need to use Building Evacuation, Mac and Stella style. See you in the lobby, I guess."

Stella doesn't say that she might leave to go help the North Tower if there's a chance, but Claire knows her well enough to know that Stella might not be in the lobby when she gets down.

"Bye, Claire."

"It's never goodbye, Stella, it's always 'until next time.'"

Then the line goes dead and Stella reluctantly pockets the phone, feeling for all the world she shouldn't have hung up with her.

And it's silent for a second, after Stella and Claire have stopped talking, for one very long moment in the midst of the day, all hubbub ceasing for a time in which the South Tower goes dark with the smoke starting to billow outside the window.

The screams erupt, tearing out of the mouths of the businessmen and women, the aides and interns, their minds reeling with confusion from one side of the lobby and horrified knowledge from the other. Stella's jaw trembles slightly, but she's trained to be a police officer, and a police officer she becomes. "Get away from the windows! Get away from the northwest side of the building!"

Some respond directly to her order, while others need the flashing of her badge to respond. She corrals them all away, setting her jaw with pain but not letting herself become emotional. She'll kill them all if she's not careful—smoke inhalation can be deadly, and she's not sure if any debris would break the glass. The best thing to do right now is to stay put.

_Isn't it?_

She's vaguely aware of the crying, the screams growing hoarse around her, as she fights her own tears back and sets to work. She takes a moment to pull her long hair up into a ponytail as people start spilling down the staircase and out of the South Tower. From the opposite side of the room, people start to scream that they can see people hitting the ground outside.

_Jumpers?_

**08:49:50 AM**

There isn't any room for doubts or second thoughts now, and 2 World Trade Center is so close to whatever is happening that she can't play with lives. She's about to call for an evacuation when the Public Address system goes online. "**Your attention please, ladies and gentlemen. The South Tower is secure. There is no need to evacuate Building 2. As some of you may know, an airplane has struck the North Tower/Building 1. While this is a tragedy, the incident has occurred in the other building. All tenants of this building must know that the South Tower is safe. You should remain in the building and return to your offices and floors. Thank you**."***

That was it. The decision was made for her. But why did it feel so… wrong? Her police radio spat static and frantic voices. All called this a horrific accident, and it was, and it had to be, but people were dying by the moment and she was standing in the middle of the South Tower, not doing anything.

She sprints to the exit, into the overwhelming smoke without a thought for her own safety—or for those she left behind. Immediately, she begins to cough in the black air and wraps her elbow around her mouth. As she heads toward the North Tower, she begins to trip and stumble over debris and mutilated, bloodied bodies that looked as if they had imploded on contact. Ash and heat wafted through the air, and the once cool day became excruciatingly hot. Live bodies pushed past her, running the opposite way from the North Tower. Tears

Suddenly, a hand grabs hers and places a flimsy mask in it. She blesses small miracles as she looks up at the grizzled old policeman that had handed it to her and straps the thing on. And then, as the debris gets hotter and hotter and the twisted metal scrapes her legs, she falls over a dead body, blood splashing up her pants.

**08:53:19**

She asks the corpses' forgiveness as she gets back up, as she runs, forgiveness that she's so callous—she can't see them until it's too late, she explains to the already dead around the black smoke in her lungs. She never makes it to the North Tower, never even sees the doorway, because then a hand grips around her shoulder and pulls her back.

Stella could never be called scrawny, and the fact that she was pulled back by tiny Heather Moore must owe to her present exhaustion, because Stella's broken away from her before, in anger and frustration that was usually not directed specifically at the older CSI. Either way, Heather's pull drops her to her knees in the soot, throat working on coughing out the smoke she had inhaled while her eyes tear out the ash.

Heather's only a few years older than Stella, but much more mature. Her skin is pale and her hair is usually a medium blonde that is somehow her natural color. Today they're both ash gray, and her soft-spoken demeanor turns into yelling over the plight of the North Tower. "What are you doing out here?"

Stella takes that as a 'aren't you supposed to be somewhere else' and shakes her head. "The South Tower announced that it was safe—"

"You were in the South Tower? And you took an announcement as a sign to leave? Stella, you left panicked people that could riot to do what? Save some lives? You could have done that in the South Tower!"

Thoroughly chastised, but undefeated, Stella looks back towards where the South Tower should be, but can't see it due to the smoke. "I was doing what felt right," she yells to her superior officer, whose scowl almost looks laughable under layers of soot. She would have chuckled merrily with Heather's own bell-like laugh joining in if this was real life, but the fact that people are losing their lives around them as they speak makes this a nightmare, makes nothing funny.

Heather motions Stella to follow her, making a tsk, tsk_ sound and moving through th_e rubble with grace even with her gimpy leg. "I can't do anything to help the North Tower," Heather yells in all seriousness, gesturing to the weak leg that she refused to let slow her down. She coughs once, twice in the overbearing heat and debris and then turns to look at the now vague outline of the huge building. "But we can calm the South, keep people relaxed as possible. We don't want any civilian lives risked, Stella," she continues, almost patiently in the madness. "We're sworn to protect and serve."

**08:57:04**

Stella's mouth forms an expletive that she doesn't spit out. Instead, she looks angrily toward the North Tower and clenches her hands in fists, nails biting into the skin. She's aware of the pain, but disregards it—feels that the only way she can relate to the North Tower's suffering denizens is experiencing the pain herself. But she's already experiencing it, as she watches shape after dark human shape tumble through the air. She can almost hear the splatter of the body on concrete, and she wails inside of her head, but outside the only indication of her state of chaos are tears making hot tracks down her face. Damn it, she needs to get in there! But they're walking away—why are they walking away? Stella makes a break for it, but Heather's there again, telling her forcefully that something needed to be done in the South Tower, that they'll be saving people from a distance, but Stella's not buying one moment of it. "I—"

Heather deflates a bit and pats Stella's arm as they stop in their tracks. "Truth is, Stella," she says morosely, "I need you."

"But—but the people are dying, Heather. New York is dying!"

"Stella. I'm not asking you to come, I'm telling you. We have citizens that are going to try to get people out of the North Tower's rubble—not just citizens, Stella, civilians. And if the North Tower falls, the people of the South Tower will panic. We're preventative measures."

Stella opens her mouth to protest again, her brows sweeping downward and her eyes squinting in anger, but the fight goes out of her as her superior's gaze drives into her own, and Heather sighs, rapping her fingers against the leg in sadness for the loss of it. If her leg had been stronger, she wouldn't have to move Stella off from what she really was needed for and wanted to do. Together, the pair, both defeated by the world they lived in by one way or another, move to the doorway that leads into the 2 World Trade Center's lobby. Heather's eyes are pale and sad, and Stella notices that she massages the old injury in her leg that kept her from being able to participate in normal police work. "Stella," she says briefly, ignoring the look of hurt on the other woman's face, "If you'd been truly following your gut, I think you would have stayed within the South Tower. But that's for another day. You're smart, you'll learn."

Stella gives Heather a sad frown as she considers the injury that had taken her out of the job for months. She had kept her job, was allowed at crime scenes, but Stella knows it hurt her to have to remain when a chase went down or a shootout started. Her gun is a seemingly useless tool of her belt, and even her pants leg seems to sag with the knowledge that she'll never walk the same way again, will never get down to the true nitty-gritty work she once loved.

**09:00:05**

Stella's sorry for her, though she knows Heather would never want her to be, as she limps into the South Tower. However, Stella can't even think to pity when Heather uses her gifts of speech to quiet the scene in the South Tower, along with grateful security guards, who are in over their heads. Stella helps a young woman get to the elevator and joins Heather in soothing frazzled nerves, all the while glancing to the north, imagining death and destruction, the heat of fire and the screaming of the building as it weighed upon itself. Within two minutes, the lobby seems to start to return to a state that isn't right, will never be right, but it isn't a riot scene, and that's all they can do for now.

Until the public address system goes back online with a buzz and a calm announcement to evacuate in a similarly calm and orderly manner makes its way down the floors and hallways of the South Tower.

They begin to usher the people out of the building, while some wail and others cry. Heather disappears into the crowd as Stella begins to climb the stairs to the second floor, beginning the arduous process of evacuating a building, passing and jostling people on her way up, urging people down, assisting those who needed assistance, and above all, keeping an eye on the cell phone nearly welded to her hand. In the dim light created by the cell phone's glow, she can only just see the outline of a six digit number, climbing as the seconds wear away.

09:02:58

09:02:59

09:03:00

09:03:01

**09:03:02**

And then the world (at least as Stella Bonasera had known it) ends.

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**Questions of the Week:**

**Would you like to see Aiden, Danny, or both appear in additional past chapters? (If both, which one would you like to see more or first)**

******How was Heather's leg injured?**

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**A/N: The second chapter of Strong… I apologize for the abrupt entrance of Heather Moore. In case you were confused (and I confuse people easily), Lance Wheatley is the Dayshift Supervisor, in Mac's future position. Heather Moore is his second-in-command. Following are Allison Greener, Mac Taylor, and the newest member of the team, Stella Bonasera.**

**This chapter took a lot of research. I watched videos, read articles, and found timelines to support what I was writing. This does not mean, however, that I was completely right. If you find anything of issue, please tell me so that I can change it. Thank you.**

***** There was, in fact, an announcement given over the PA system in the South Tower that stated that the building was secure and for people to go back to their offices and floors. It did not, however, follow protocol or correspond to any instruction known to have been given. Most believe it should have never been given in the first place.**

**09:03:02 was the exact time that the South Tower was hit by flight 175.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three  
A/N: Wow. It's been a long time, hasn't it? I haven't given up on this story, so if you do enjoy it, fear not! I've been having some serious computer trouble, but hopefully that has now been cleared up. As for this chapter, I do not like it at all: I tried to go back and correct it, but it only made it worse. I will fix anything pointed out to me, as always, and hope that you enjoy your read anyway. I will try to post updates every couple of weeks and I apologize again for how long it has taken me to get this chapter up. Thank you! -decyfer**

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_Crowded streets are cleared away_

_One by one_

_Hollow heroes separate_

_As they run_

_You're so cold_

_Keep your hand in mine_

_Wise men wonder while strong men die_

_Show me how it ends_

_It's alright_

_Show me how defenseless you really are_

_Satisfied and empty inside_

_Well, that's alright_

_Let's give this another try_

_If you find your family_

_Don't you cry_

_In this land of make believe_

_Dead and dry_

_You're so cold_

_But you feel alive_

_Lay your hands on me one last time_

_It's alright_

So Cold – Breaking Benjamin

* * *

September 12, 2001, 8:21 AM

The wreckage burns on, in the outside world and inside their hearts. They're not quite in their right minds anymore: sleep has come sparingly, and many have been up for more than twenty-four hours, still pulling corpses out of the rubble. There came a joyous moment only a half hour ago, when they located someone with taps on a pipe, but those taps had stopped, and with it, their tentative hopes had plummeted. The taps aren't exactly uncommon: it had happened for hours yesterday, but most of the people in the rubble are buried too deeply to reach in time—they bleed to death, give in to organ failure, or something of the like, and the rescuers are left with what-ifs and what-nows as they pull the dead out of what the press was calling the greatest American tragedy since Pearl Harbor. Not that the media had experienced either firsthand. Not that they remained after the buildings had sunken to the earth, not that they showed the bloody and broken remains of American citizens. In some ways, it was better that way. In others, it was another tragedy.

The last survivor had been pulled out of the rubble a little after seven in the morning, Port Authority officer John McLoughlin, a bridge cop, a split Jersey-New Yorker. He remembers being there as they freed him from his entrapment—he remembers the disappointment at it not being Claire, or Stella, and he remembers the burning shame for thinking such. Tears had pulled at his eyes, seeing the man and realizing that he was alive, and that they were most likely not. What is he going to do without them? He has spent the better part of the last hour in a mood, wondering what night terrors await McLoughlin… and what similar horrible memories will twist themselves into in his own mind.

Several fellow officers have attempted to take him in. Some know of his extra dose of anguish as he moves from excavation volunteers to debris clearers, trying to find his place. No one has been able to keep him for long and no one has been able to force him away from the remnant of what had been, and his head clears a bit with every step he takes, allowing him to recognize the shock wearing away, leaving him bone-tired and in agonizing grief. He needs human contact, he knows, and begins to seek it out, moving from person to person, from the smoking remains of the North Tower to the pile of what was once the South.

He ends up watching a woman with long, wavy brown hair tend to her bleeding hands, wrapping them with the rips of a relatively clean cotton shirt. He walks up to her, hesitantly, though he knows her well, and she tries to flash him a grim smile, but it looks more like a tired grimace. Bags sit around her usually warm brown eyes, and the rookie blinks with sleepiness as she finishes tying them. They'd probably be tattered and useless in another hour, but if he knew her at all, she probably wouldn't care.

She looks up at him, not asking if he was alright or trying to use sickly sweet words to try to comfort him. Instead, she places one of her hands on his shoulder as they stare out over the smoking heaps of what once was all of the World Trade Center. Each building had collapsed, though only two had been struck. So many lives...

He closes his eyes and opens them again, heavily, without pretense: his guard is down with her and hers with him, and so they stand together, taking a few seconds of a break in the tragedy that surrounds them.

It has been over twenty-four hours since the Towers had been struck. They know the grim reality that is starting to set in on them: anyone left in the rubble is probably dead. He can't help feeling guilty that the anguish has faded, and now the only other emotion he's feeling is numbness. Claire… Stella… he feels their empty spaces like a cavern he needs to cross, but he hunkers down, refusing to accept that either are dead, refusing to take that first step to letting them go.

The woman has no such trepidations: she hadn't known Claire, and her contact with Stella had been limited. She doesn't know how he feels, how it hurts to be in his place. She can't know. She doesn't want to know, not after the things she's already experienced, has already gone through today, and in the past. But still she stands, most likely over some of the dying and already dead, and gives him her presence as a comfort.

He appreciates it. He does, really. They move together, toward another dig site, the woman keeping her eye on the ground, listening—waiting. For survivors, perhaps, or the dead. She has a bandage on one arm, evidence of her giving blood sometime in the last day. He's not sure how she has had time for that, or even how they were able to be convinced to take blood from someone so worn down, but he doesn't ask. She's probably pulled many from the rubble dead: at least, that's what the haunted look on her face reads, what the deathly look in her eyes says. He's glad to find her, when losing yourself is simple and misplacing a partner in the smoke and fire is easy. She doesn't whimper, doesn't cry. Her fingers are burned and her cheeks are red from the heat still rising from the destruction. Beyond her, several firemen are trying to put out a fire, but as soon as that one is laid to rest, another will spring up. It will go on for days, weeks, even—he knows it well, and meanwhile the people still inside would decay—no! He refuses to let his mind fill in the rest, and feels another part of him retreat into the shock he's still experiencing.

He spots an arm underneath the rubble, and cuts his hands more to get to it, but it's just the arm and a bit of a shoulder, and he can't do much more than hand it off for identification, wondering all the while how anyone or anything could do this.

It—the arm—had belonged to a woman, he guesses, a slight one, a small one. He can only imagine who had once used it, who had once belonged to it—was he becoming desensitized? The grief and the pain finally overwhelm him and he gives a small growl aloud, his fingers clenching into a fist, his eyes narrowing with pent-up frustration because everyone is dead, everyone, yet the woman beside him looks at him with no pity in her eyes, in her expression. If he had been thinking clearly, he would call himself a hypocrite- just a few minutes ago, he was glad that she wasn't coddling him-but now—now he wonders why she isn't. Why she doesn't chant her dutiful, yet bland apologies about what had happened to his wife and his friend—he might have even called her his best friend, someday—and suddenly his temper, which usually lays so low, flares up.

You couldn't blame him his lack of control. After all, he had just lost two women so important to him—people have done and do crazier things for less all the time. He was a witness to this every day of his life, and would probably continue to be.

"Why don't you pity me?" he mutters finally, his temper taking control, warping its way past his usual screenings, past his usual masks. "Why don't you look at me like the rest of them, like Lance and Allison? What's wrong with you that you don't care?"

Her eyes flash with anger before she visibly collects herself, before she hugs her arms to herself, grits her teeth, and responds."Don't you think I've lost someone?" she says in almost a whisper, so that he has to strain to hear her. "Don't you think I've felt pain? I remember those looks, those pitying stares, from the people who came and told me my best friend was dead—murdered! I endured them from my teachers, my peers, and even my parents. That didn't change that Elisabeth was gone. It did nothing! And then when my mother left—couldn't deal with a daughter that was broken and a husband that was broke—you don't need pity. I didn't need pity. No one here that's alive needs—pity—" she spat that, like it was poison to her tongue. "What they need is understanding, is love, is comfort, but they certainly don't need to be coddled and told that everything is alright." She sweeps her arms around her in anger, for so many lost souls, eyes glazing over at the destruction. "Nothing is alright, do you hear me? Nothing! There are thousands of people dead, and you dare wonder where your pity is. You disgust me."  
She turns and makes for another group of rescue workers until he reaches out and grabs her arm. She tries to throw herself away, to yank her arm out of his iron grip, but he was a soldier, a Marine, and she isn't getting anywhere fast.

"Aiden—Aiden!" He spoke urgently to her, and the glare spread across her face softens incrementally, enough for him to begin. "I'm sorry. Listen, I'm sorry." Her face crumbles a bit, in the heat and the death around her, and she grabs his arm and holds on to him almost like a lost child, like he was doing to her—and they locked each other in the grief-filled embrace, longing for entirely different things but made closer by the shared experience of sudden loss. He remembers suddenly how young she is, and how old she looks. This was a woman that had had to grow up quickly, without the help of a mother, and he couldn't help wondering how young she was when she had lost them.  
"I don't need your sorries," she says at last. "These people, these innocent people, they need those apologies. From whoever did this. From whatever monster could end all of these lives like it was nothing."

"We'll get them," he says as they stand together under the smoke, on The Pile, the heap of stone and metal and electrical wires, still sparking, and bodies, and blood and death and gore and most of all— horror.

"I apologize for snapping at you," Aiden mumbles, finding her voice after another long pause in which the pair had almost given in to their current state of exhaustion. "I shouldn't have done that. I know you'll say that it's okay and you understand, and I know you do, but—listen, Mac, New York's been so… cold for so long… do you know what I mean? Can you?"

He doesn't reply, but he understands what she's trying to say. No smiles are exchanged on the streets, no nods of the head or meetings of the eyes. New York had treated its denizens like they didn't exist, and the people looked at each other with cold regard, with blank stares. No one cared; no one gave a second thought to those around them.

Yet here, on The Pile, there were small, grim smiles, nods and acknowledgement. There were sad looks exchanged and camaraderie freely given. In a wave of grief, he starts to think that this might be the start to something different. Something where people would take a second out of their day to make someone else's worthwhile. And he realizes that without the silent and the not-so-silent support he has received here, his current condition…would be far less stable. And he wishes that New York could have come together without so many lives lost.  
And as he grips the arm of his friend, who he had worked with many times, who he hadn't really cared to know until their paths had crossed that one fateful day, and to whom he owed his continuing sanity, he wonders where they would all be if what they were all wishing for… would come true.

"Thank you, Aiden," he says, interrupting his own train of thought for his own benefit.

Aiden gives him a tired, foreworn look as they move again, as they struggle to keep their tired brains working, as they take in the still-smoking remains of something that only a day before had been great. They stand at the precipice of a new United States, though neither of them know it, where life would be taken a little less for granted, if only for a while, and where the American spirit would soar above them, granting freedom and justice to all.

Their ascent into the middle of the Pile is met with more blood and pieces of half-gone corpses already removed, and Aiden breathes as deeply as she can in the suffocating smoke, fighting off a scream that this was all so unfair. Instead of crying out, she grits her teeth and bears it, her hand clutched over her heart, feeling the non-existent taunts of 'weakling' that had once surrounded her when she was young, when she had lost them. She isn't weak, not anymore, if she ever had been then. Slowly, she pulls the bruising hand away. He looks into her eyes, pits of sadness, and feels his own heartbreak reflected in them. He's impressed by her; by the compassion she has for the dead and by her ability to bear the grief that came with it. He vows that if he ever heads his own team, he will hire Aiden Burn, if the burnout doesn't get to her first. He'd warn her to be careful, he would, if it wouldn't drive her into the ground sooner—she was filled with a determination that could one day get her killed, though he tries not to focus on it.

"It could take months," Aiden says now, breaking him out of his thoughts and she out of her own, looking as if she was floating away—probably from lack of sleep. He isn't sure what she means by it until he rubs his eyes, and his brain jogs to catch up with him.  
She's referring to the amount of time it would take to catch the people responsible for this, but she's also alluding to the time it would take for the city to truly make it back on its feet: not to rise up and stand for a cause, but to really regain its footing, to close the wounds this attack had brought with it. She's speaking of healing, of revenge, of triumph in the end, but she's cautious, because things heal with time, because people don't always get caught—he has no doubt that the city, the nation—the world—will find and bring down those responsible, but how long could it take?

"Years," he agrees eventually as they look at a patch of wall, still erect and solid-looking. It has splotches of blood on it and what looked to be a bloody hand trail, falling down the pant and into the rubble. He shudders slightly, his gut curling in over itself, making a churning soup of grief and anxiety. Who had placed that streak?

A lone, ashy individual standing at the top of where the South Tower had once been moves towards the duo, and they don't recognize the man, though he's obviously a cop. He's wearing dirty and torn uniform pants and a tank top. Where his shirt and jacket had gone is a mystery. Aiden's own uniform jacket had been tossed by the sidelines somewhere long ago, and his own rests on the shoulders of one of the survivors that had been shivering in obvious shock by the sidelines of Ground Zero, as the media had taken up calling it. Perhaps that was a better thing to call it than The Pile, but he doesn't control the lingo and he certainly doesn't want to. The name 'The Pile', while insensitive, could never describe the scene better. It was all that was left of seven once vital buildings in one heap, one Pile, of American spirit, torn to shreds among the pain and loss. However much spirit sags, pride is built, and he narrows his eyes at the sun to be able to see the naturally illuminated symbol of their country, placed haphazardly into the rubble by rescue workers.  
_…and the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air – gave proof through the night – that our flag was still there. And say does that Star - Spangled Banner yet wave… o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave…_

The national anthem comes to mind, and he smiles briefly at it before moving to greet the man, who has come down from his perch at the sight of them.

"Officer Williams," he introduces himself, pointing at the badge made lackluster by hours working in the rubble. He's a Jersey cop, that much is obvious now, and he coughs a bit into his left sleeve before putting up a dirty hand for them to shake. In his other hand he holds a small container of yellow fruit—pineapple, it seems—and as the two shake his hand (Mac with hands just as dirty, Aiden with her cotton-wrapped palm), he tries to foist off the pineapple to his newest companions. "Have you eaten? Now, I never thought I'd see the day when I'd be giving out pineapple, of all the God-forsaken things, but it came in the sack lunch." Williams grimaces at the fruit as he holds it up, obviously perturbed by it. "Never did like pineapple, you see," he continues. "Reminds me too much of the tropics. Let me tell you, those Hawaiian vacation packages they give out as prizes, of all things—sound like hell."

As he looks over at his mirror (they seem to have both raised the same eyebrow, and Aiden's lips are pursed) he can see Aiden gesturing for him to take the fruit. He tries to wave her off with some fancy handwork of his own, but she's having none of it, and reluctantly he accepts the pineapple, pulls off the lid and puts the first piece in his mouth.

He wonders when Aiden had decided to take over for Stella in the make-sure-Mac-eats department, but the pineapple is good enough and Williams seems to be exponentially happier without the fruit on his person. "I'm Detective Taylor," Mac says slowly, his voice cracking a bit with disuse, "and this is Officer Burn." Aiden looks none too happy about him introducing her, but he ignores the gaze and goes on eating.  
"It's nice to meet you, given the circumstances. I don't like to waste food," he changes topic abruptly, "but pineapple—" he trails off as Aiden gives him a look, and he backs off slightly."New Yorkers," he mutters under his breath. "Can't live with 'em…"

Aiden glares as he grimaces, and Williams picks up on it and lets his analogy go. "Came across early this morning," he refers to the river. "I would've come earlier, but we had to calm the panic on the streets first."

He notices now that Williams has dark circles under his eyes and that his gaze is heavy with lack of sleep and burning with some sort of recent loss. Suddenly the man he had thought less of for daring to crack even weak jokes seems more human. "Maybe if I'd gotten here earlier, the woman I pulled out would be alive."

That explains it. "How do you know she could have been saved?"

"The tapping on the pipes," Williams sighs. "I was the one to hear her. We kept asking her to keep going, but she stopped, and when we finally got to her, she was gone."

Mac and Aiden incline their heads, giving their understanding, and Williams' blue eyes droop a bit as he eyes the blood covering the man. Cuts from things he's not sure how to explain mar Mac's hands and arms, a burn covers a forearm, and his eyes are red and bloodshot.  
In short, he doesn't look healthy.

Williams rubs the back of his head awkwardly, the moment stretching on longer than he was anticipating. Finally, the Jersey cop mumbles an apology and trips his way across the remains of the Towers, spitting expletives as he catches his pants on a piece of metal.

The small flare of something goes along with him. Perhaps that was his purpose: to bring a bit of reality into the surreal, to wake the duo up. Perhaps they never would have discovered what they did, if he had not entered their lives.

* * *

**A/N: Wasn't sure about Aiden, added her in anyway. Wasn't sure about Dt. Williams, added him in anyway. Shouldn't have. Oh well.**


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: The first thing that I'd like - no, I need - to do is to give a special thanks to lily moonlight, who gave me the inspiration to continue with this story. Without you, I doubt that I would have been able to complete even this chapter. Again, thank you, Lily. I don't know what I'd do without you!

The second thing I want to do is apologize for the long wait between chapters. I can promise you that it will be shorter. I don't know how much, but the wait will be cut significantly.

Third, I'd like to ask you to leave a comment if you can, whether it be a correction or a praise. I always enjoy receiving input, and it really inspires me to write. So if you can do that, I'd be forever grateful!

Thank you and I hope you enjoy!

* * *

_"For those of us who lived through these events, the only marker we'll ever need is the tick of a clock at the 46th minute of the eighth hour of the 11th day." – President George W. Bush_

The first time she awakes, it's impossible to tell where - or even when - she is. The smoke obscures everything; it's in her lungs, crusted on her skin, hovering in the air. She coughs violently, trying desperately to draw in a fresh breath. Pain radiates through her, down her back, up her arms and legs. Her head pounds, her mouth gapes, and if she had had the breath, she would have screamed in agony. Since she has none, she instead struggles with the heat and pain, trying to keep herself alert. But as the smoke seems to close in and the pain reaches a crescendo, finally, silently, she gives into the darkness hovering at the edges of her vision.

The second (or third) time she opens her eyes, the smoke has mostly drifted along its way. Light filters in among dust and smoke, and she blinks, trying to clear out long-dried eyes. Pain threatens to overwhelm her, and she begins to give in before her training, drilled into her long ago, flares in the back of her mind. Suddenly alert, she begins to take stock of herself.

She can't quite remember what has happened. She swallows, though her throat is parched, and shifts slightly, as if to assure herself that she is indeed alive. She twitches each finger of her left hand, dislodging small pieces of rubble in the process. Then, she rotates her wrist, moves the elbow, and finally shrugs the shoulder. That taken care of, she carefully extracts the arm from its case of rock, lifts the arm into her vision, and inspects the limb. It had been encrusted with dirt, scraped liberally, and covered in blood, now half-dried. Her fingers seem almost stripped of skin, as if she had tried to hang onto something and had failed. She places the limb carefully back onto the rubble and begins the same process with her right. The fingers don't move on this hand. Eerily calm, she gives up her attempt and relaxes into the rocks, looking up into the dim light. Wires spark above, water drips from pipes, and layers of twisted metal lays still among it all. It gives her a sense of aloneness, of no possible escape. She wants to scream again, now, but the most she can do is hiss through clenched teeth in something more than agony.

She remains quiet and motionless, not unlike a corpse, until finally she lifts her beaten, throbbing head and looks down the right arm. It might not have been the smartest thing to do, but she has all the excuses in the world. The arm is bent at an odd angle near the elbow; on the lower arm a thick, jagged piece of metal lays cold, digging into once-soft skin. Blood seeps sluggishly out of the deep wound, and she blinks at it, reaches to tug it out, before thinking better of herself. She inspects the fingers, noting that two of them are bent and broken. Her eyes sweep down along her torso, which is covered liberally with fist-size (and larger) pieces of foundation, to her legs, her throat constricting when she notices the thin pipe stabbing its way through the muscle of her left. She swallows forcefully, holding the leg deliberately still, yet trembling with abandon. The extraordinary pain suddenly explained, she watches as with each tremble, a new wave of blood seeps from around the metal. Her chest heaves, and she tries desperately not to give into the panic and the pain. But ultimately, it's too much. She slips into the darkness once again.

She drifts in and out over the next while, sometimes being awake long enough to wonder what the sharp pain in her abdomen is, but she's soon unconscious again, stumbling through the day she's going to die in phases. Because she will die. There's no way out...

_She approaches the door to the stairwell cautiously, bags of food in hand. The door squeaks as it opens, a long, keening sound that etches itself into her mind. It's ominously empty inside. Not a soul climbs or descends the staircase. As such, her steps echo, each bouncing back to her magnified. The stairs seem to go on forever. She rounds several corners, continues up several flights, but no doors can be seen, nor any indication of where she is. The light seems to sputter, leaving her in darkness for a moment. When the light returns, her hands are covered in blood. She shrieks, dropping the bags, which burst in a flood of the red liquid. She slips on it as she runs, but the blood seems only to be growing, climbing. Up the stairs she goes, stumbling, feeling weaker by the second. She rounds another corner, looking up the flight to see none other than Claire, waving at her cheerily. "Stella!" she calls, her voice wavering in and out, almost as if she had shouted underwater._

_She blinks and calls back, relief flooding through her. She climbs toward her, but Claire seems only further away. She increases her pace, begins to panic. Suddenly, there comes a screech of metal on metal, of bending pipes and the throes of death. But nothing changes. The stairwell is still lit, is still intact. Her mind flashes through images of death, but in the end, Claire is still beckoning her. But there's something wrong. Blood drips down her brow, increasing in flow. The skin rips away, and Claire's body lurches, her mouth opening wide in a strangled scream. Deep lacerations open in her arms, and her hands fill with blood. Claire looks at them in horror, and then back up to Stella. "Stella!"_

_She tries to move to help her, but she's stuck. Blood covers her shoes, sticking her steadfastly to the floor. Claire's blood drips down each step, tendrils of death waiting to grab her, to drag her away. Claire gazes at her with glazed-over, dead eyes, and then, without warning, the stairwell collapses, and she falls..._

She lurches awake, instinctively grabbing for a hold. The right arm refuses, sending only waves of pain, while the left grabs hold of empty air. Her head shoots up, sending waves of cruel light across her vision, bringing her flight to a dizzying halt. Her mouth tastes of blood and is as dry as cotton. Any light that had remained is now gone: the world had slipped into darkness without her even noticing. The remains of the Tower shift and creak with the night's wind, but inside, there is no refreshing breath of air. The only smell is of fire and of fuel, of blood and her own fear. And then, as if spitting in the face of the notion that nothing else could possibly go wrong, she begins to cough. Her bruises and breaks send pain through her nerves as she jerks and sucks in noisy breaths, fighting to keep still and not further aggravate her condition. The taste of copper fills her mouth, and her vision begins to glaze over, leaving only blurry shapes. The world starts to spin, and like that, she falls limp and cold upon the debris.

_She's above the rubble now. For a second, she feels only relief. She's saved! But then reality sets in: there's no pain, no feeling at all. And how did she escape? It shouldn't have been possible!_

_She doesn't recognize them at first, as they walk past, hunch-backed and bleary-eyed. Dark circles surround their bloodshot gazes, and grime coats them from head to heavy work boots. The leader she recognizes first: a battle-weary Mac, looking at least ten years older than when she last saw him. His hands are cut and torn, but it doesn't seem to bother him. Next to the worn man slumps an equally worn woman. Her dark waves, once beautiful, are now tangled and matted. Her eyes are dull as she speaks: "It's been weeks, Mac. You're going to kill yourself."_

_Weeks? It had only been hours! Her mind whirls as she looks down at her seemingly solid limbs. Then, with a deft movement, she pinches the skin near her wrist, expecting to feel pain. Instead, nothing happens. Not even a mark from her fingernails appears. She doesn't bother to scream. No one can hear her. No one can see._

_And so she follows. What else can she do?_

_Mac chuckles without humor. "You're one to talk."_

_Aiden, who Stella can only recall working with a few times, has been looking for her? Surprise runs through her veins, sticking her in place as the two leaders continue on. Behind them walks a small redhead, who limps slightly and has an air of pain surrounding her. She lights up slightly when she spots Wheatley, but it fades when she takes stock of his expression. Stella feels herself grow cold with Wheatley's piercing, sad gaze. He sidesteps as the group approaches, covering something from sight._

_"Mac," he murmurs, brows furrowing in obvious sympathy._

_Mac catches on right away. "No. No!" He breaks out into a run, stumbling over the debris, to where several rescue workers were dragging a body from the abyss._

_Her body._

_No!_

As she shoots awake for the second time that day, she begins to wonder why she couldn't have just been killed quickly and have it done with. The agonizing feeling of her own body shutting down wasn't the most pleasant thing in the world, especially as blood begins to dribble down her chin as she coughs. Night has long since fallen in the city that never sleeps... the city of dreams. Or, perhaps, the city of unrealized dreams, now. So many dreams had been crushed in the span of a few hours. So many dreams have yet to be smashed into pieces by this. How many would go back to their families? How many wouldn't?

So much for the city of dreams. She begins to chuckle to herself, madly, and wonders vaguely... is she going insane? She certainly feels as if she is. Even the pain she's in from the laughter can't deter her: after all, she's slowly waiting for death under a pile of twisted metal and crumbled rock. It's a wonder she's not dead already.

Finally, the laughter ceases and she starts to struggle to gather her thoughts. She begins by assessing her location. A large beam of metal, larger than she thought possible, lays twisted just above her head. Overtop of it rests a slab of concrete and part of the staircase she had climbed... before... before everything had died. The three together had made a small cavern by what she assumed was the edge of the South Tower - or, at least, what had been the South Tower. Other pieces lay around her, some below, pressing uncomfortably against her spine, and some on her body itself, keeping her from breathing deeply. Surveying the destruction, she wonders how she was alive, and how much longer that would be the case.

The glint of polished metal catches her eye, behind a rock the size of a small dog. She squints at it, not comprehending, until finally she makes out the shape, made blurry by smoke and the blood running down her face. Oh. Her gun. She lays back for a moment, ready to slip back into a world without pain, when suddenly it hits her. Oh. Oh!

The gun could be her ticket out. But... then again, the weapon may not still be in working order, after the fall it took. She tries desperately to keep the feeling of skin ripping at bay, the feeling of dangling over a precipice... the air around her as she fell, and the erupting pain of landing.

But it's too late. Pain flares in her leg and in her arm, and she twitches violently. Blood seeps again out of the wounds, but her mind is starting to deteriorate, her thought process beginning to fail, and she can only think about how her shirt is a goner, and the pants too - ruined by blood and dirt. A chuckle dies in her throat as she considers this. As she looks into the face of death. But was it really necessary to contemplate? What would it matter in a day or so? She's never going to need to wear anything again. Hell, she's never going to see the sky again. She leans back into the rubble, looking up into a further darkened concrete sky. It was time to give up. There's no way out. She'll die here, trapped. She'll never see her friends again. She'll never see Mac again.

Without warning, she's accosted... not by the present, but by the past. She watches her life, all of her struggles and failures, but especially her triumphs. She remembers graduating, going to college, to the police academy. She recalls Vice, and then the overwhelming pride of being chosen for the CSI team. She grins to herself at her partnership with Mac - rocky at first, but the initial strife had quickly made its way into a lasting friendship. Her heart warms as she thinks of him - the man she considers her best friend, her closest confidant. She wonders if he will miss her, and knows the answer.

Case after case floods her mind, as well as the aftermaths they would spend together, keeping their sanity and trying not to become disillusioned with the world, trying not to succumb to the almost inevitable burnout. And she realizes - for as much as Claire understood Mac, as much as she loved him and he loved her, she would never understand the pain of his career, and the grim hopes that came with it - because although they worked with death, they were also protecting the living and bringing justice to the families, those who wouldn't have it otherwise. And so she remembers and thinks on the times of the past, of the long evenings spent over a case file, over lunches and dinners with both Mac and Claire, laughing and carrying on well into the night.

Sadness, overwhelming sadness, fills her. It chokes her, keeps her from breathing.

It's too late to save Claire. Stella knows that. She saw the floors above her collapse, and Claire was so high up... so precariously placed. A bolt of pain and sadness shoots through her, the times she and Claire spent together racing through her heart. Cooking disasters, shopping, kicking Mac out to have a girl's night. She will miss Claire... probably forever, but she has to remember - she is left. Alive. The odds pointed to her demise, to her not making it through this, but somehow, she was here. And death coats the air, to be sure... but she could live. She will live. She has to... if not for her sake, then for Mac's... because she is now the only person left in New York that can possibly stem his despair.

And if that isn't what a friend was for, as a shoulder to cry on, as a confidant, as a listener... she doesn't know what is. With herculean effort, she reaches with her left arm and pries the metal from her right. The limb throbs, still resting crooked on the rubble. Blood rushes from the wound, telling her that she doesn't have much time. She swallows before she pulls the pipe from her leg. As much as training has told her not to pull a projectile from its resting place... she can't afford to wait now. And so the pipe goes with a horrible sucking sound that makes her flinch. The wound starts to seep, and she lurches into a crouch, swaying dizzily in what was now probably dawn.

She tries move swiftly and with a purpose - she has to get to the gun, and quickly. She can feel the blood running down her limbs, and blinks away the blood dripping into her eyes, newly wet from the sweat beading on her brow. She falls, and falls again... it's slow going. Her vision begins to cloud over, black edging in at her vision. Her head pounds, and a new round of coughing begins, sending blood dribbling from her mouth. At last, she falls, hand outstretched, by the rock. Her fingers come nearly into contact with the weapon, and she groans as she misses it. No! _No!_ This can't possibly be it. This can't possibly be where she dies, inches from the instrument that could orchestrate her freedom. She can't give up, not now!

With one last push from her feet, she slides the remaining inches. Her vision is almost completely darkened now, and the pain is reaching a crescendo. Finally, her hand comes in contact with the gun. Clumsily, she flicks the safety off and aims for a broken slab of concrete along the far edge of the cavern. Her finger closes around the trigger, but before she can hear if it fires, she slips away, into the welcoming blackness.

_"You haven't forgotten me yet, have you?"_

_Stella looks up from her position within the rubble... only to find that there is rubble no longer. Instead, she lies on her stomach in thick, cool grass. Her breathing is clear, her pain gone. In its place is an odd sense of peace. Claire Taylor leans over her, holding out a hand invitingly. Stella grasps it, feeling its warmth. "Claire?" she asks, confused._

_Claire gives her a rueful grin as she pulls her to her feet. "Hey, Stella."_

_Stella blinks as she regains her footing. "Am I dead?"_

_A purse of the lips, a shrug. "Somewhere in between, I'd say."_

_Choosing to ignore the answer to her second question, Stella goes for a third - as much as Stella thinks that Claire is dead, she has to ask. She has to know. "How are you here? Are you alive?" _

_"No," Claire murmurs, ignoring the first question. "No, I'm not." Stella feels her face fall. Claire shrugs. "C'est la vie," she whispers, so softly that Stella has to strain to hear. "Such is life."_

_She can't bring herself to let go of the hand, or to entertain any notion that Claire isn't alive - and so she clutches the hand as if it were a lifeline. A gentle breeze wafts through the field, brushing the leaves of the trees and the water on a still lake. She can see forever here. A large mountain range looms in the distance, larger than anything she's ever seen. Claire smiles gently, tugging on the hand. "I'm going to see what's over that range," she announces. "There's nothing left for me to do."_

_"Nothing left for you to do?" Stella yelps. "What about Mac?"_

_"You'll take care of him now," Claire says, her voice strong and unwavering, though Stella can see a hint of deep, unyielding sadness behind her eyes. "I know you will."_

_"But you would do it so much better than I could!"_

_"No, I wouldn't," she sighs. "As much as I loved him, Stella, you understand him. You're the one who can help him now." The hands slip away from their holds at last, and the two watch a cloud slip across the sky. "Don't let my death let you stop loving," she continues at last._

_"What do you mean by that?"_

_Another smile. "I suspect you'll know, in time."_

_Stella nearly chuckles through tears forming in her eyes. "You're being deliberately vague, aren't you? And I don't even know if you're real."_

_"I'm as real as you make me."_

_Stella groans. Claire tilts her head. "The mountains are calling me - or at least what's beyond them. I can find out now. My time here has come to an end." She moves in the direction of the mountains, but stops when she sees Stella move towards her. "You can't come, Stella. You're alive. Rejoice in it for as long as you can."_

_Stella holds out a hand, trying to stop her from leaving. "Wait! Will I see you again?"_

_But Claire is already gone. All that's left is a warm breeze and a word:_

_"Goodbye," the wind whispers._

_Stella chokes on a sob. "Until we meet again."_

_The world begins to fade around her. The grass dies, the trees grow bare, twisted. The water dries up, the sky fades to black. The pain returns, stronger, and she gasps, falling to her knees, clutching at the dead grass. And then it fades, and she too slips away..._


End file.
